I have lived on the lip of insanity,
wanting to know reasons,
knocking on a door. it opens.
I've been knocking from the inside!

Theologians mumble, rumble-dumple,
necessity and free will,
while lover and beloved
pull themselves into each other.

His mental questionings form the barrier.
His physical eyesight bandages his knowing.
Self-consciousness plugs his ears.

That intellectual warp and woof
keeps you wrapped in blindness.

There's a strange frenzy in my head, of birds flying,
each particle circulating on its own.
Is the one I love everywhere?

Lo, I am with you always means
when you look for God,
God is in the look of your eyes,
in the thought of looking,
nearer to you than your self,
or things that have happened to you.
There's no need to go outside.
Be melting snow.
Wash yourself of yourself.

When you are with everyone but me,
you're with no one.
When you are with no one but me,
you're with everyone.
Instead of being so bound up with everyone,
be everyone.
When you become that many,
you're nothing. Empty.

I am scrap wood thrown in your fire,
and quickly reduced to smoke.
I saw you and became empty.
This emptiness, more beautiful than existence,
it obliterates existence, and
yet when it comes, existence
thrives and creates more existence!

The sky is blue.
The world is a blind man squatting on the road.
But whoever sees your emptiness
sees beyond blue
and beyond the blind man.

Notice how the stars vanish as the sun comes up, and how all streams stream toward the ocean.

You've been fearful of being absorbed
in the ground, or drawn up by the air.
Now, your waterbead lets go and
drops into the ocean, where it came from.
It no longer has the form it had,
but it's still water.
The essence is the same.

Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence.
Existence: this place made from our love
for that emptiness!
Yet somehow comes emptiness,
this existence goes.
Praise to that happening,
over and over!

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.
Flow down and down
in always widening rings of being.

Try to dissolve out of selfishness
into a voice beyond those limits.

For years I pulled my own existence
out of emptiness.
Then one swoop, one swing of the arm,
that work is over.
Free of who I was, free of presence,
free of dangerous fear, hope,
free of mountainous wanting.

When you eventually see through the veils
to how things really are,
you will keep saying again and again,
This is certainly not like we thought it was!

Whoever brought me here
will have to take me home.

When you see the splendor of union,
the attractions of duality seem poignant
and lovely, but much less interesting.

There are guides who can show you the way.
Use them. but they will not satisfy your longing.
Keep wanting that connection
with all your pulsing energy.

No better love than love with no object,
no more satisfying work
than work with no purpose.
If you could give up tricks and cleverness,
that would be the cleverest trick!

Every thirst gets satisfied except that of these fish,
the mystics, who swim a vast ocean of grace
still somehow longing for it!

You are so weak. Give up to grace.
The ocean takes care of each wave
till it gets to shore.
You need more help than you know.

Your loving doesn't know its majesty,
until it knows its helplessness.

Humble living does not diminish.
It fills.
Going back to a simpler self gives wisdom.

There is a secret medicine given only to those
who hurt so hard they can't hope.

I said Oh no! Help me!
And that Oh no! became a rope
let down in my well.
I've climbed out to stand here in the sun.
One moment I was at the bottom of a dank,
fearful narrowness, and the next,
I am not contained by the universe.
If every tip of every hair on me could speak,
I still couldn't say my gratitude.
In the middle of these streets and gardens,
I stand and say and say again, and it's all I say,
I wish everyone could know what I know.

Recognize that your imagination and your thinking
and your sense perception are reed canes
that children cut and pretend are horsies.
Deny your desires and willfulness,
and a real mount may appear under you.
Brother, stand the pain.
Escape the poison of your impulses.
The sky will bow to your beauty, if you do.
Your old grandmothter says,
"Maybe you shouldn't go to school.
You look a little pale."
Run when you hear that.
A father's stern slaps are better.
Your bodily soul wants comforting.
The severe father wants spiritual clarity.
He scolds but eventually leads you into the open.
Pray for a tough instructor to hear
and act and stay within you.
Throw a dog a bit of something.
He sniffs to see if he wants it.
Be that careful.
Sniff with your wisdom-nose.
Get clear. Then decide.